Infinity One Read Online Free PDF

see. I see. You make it sound so reasonable, Juan.” Juan winked. “We always understood each other.” He activated the cube of his father. “What do you say? Should I have stayed or gone?”
    “Maybe stay, maybe go. How can I speak for you? Certainly taking the ship was more practical. Staying would have been more dramatic. Tom, Tom, how can I speak for you?”
    “Mark?”
    “I would have stayed and fought right to the end. Teeth, nails, everything. But that’s me. I think maybe you did the right thing, Dad. The way Juan explains it. The right thing for you, that is.”
    Voigtland frowned. “Stop talking in circles. Just tell me this: do you despise me for going?”
    “You know I don’t,” Mark said.

    The cubes consoled him. He began to sleep more soundly, after a while. He stopped fretting about the morality of his flight. He remembered how to relax.
    He talked military tactics with Atdla, and was surprised to find a complex human being behind the one-dimensional ferocity. He tried to discuss the nature of tragedy with Shakespeare, but Shakespeare seemed more intersted in talking about taverns, politics, and the problems of a professional playwright’s finances. He spoke to Goethe about the second part of Faust , asking if Goethe really felt that the highest kind of redemption came through governing well, and Goethe said, yes, yes, of course. And when Voigtland wearied of matching wits with his cubed great ones, he set them going against one another, Attila and Alexander, Shakespeare and Goethe, Hemingway and Plato, and sat back, listening to such talk as mortal man had never heard. And there were humbler sessions with Juan and his family. He blessed the cubes; he blessed their makers.
    “You seem much happier these days,” Lydia said.
    “All that nasty guilt washed away,” said Lynx.
    “It was just a matter of looking at the logic of the situation,” Juan observed.
    Mark said, “And cutting out all the masochism, the self-flagellation.”
    “Wait a second,” said Voigtland. “Let’s not hit below the belt, young man.”
    “But it was masochism, Dad. Weren’t you wallowing in your guilt? Admit it.”
    “I suppose I—”
    “And looking to us to pull you out,” Lynx said. “Which we did.”
    “Yes. You did.”
    “And it’s all clear to you now, eh?” Juan asked. “Maybe you thought you were afraid, thought you were running out, but you were actually performing a service to the republic. Eh?”
    Voigtland grinned. “Doing the right thing for the wrong reason.”
    “Exactly. Exactly.”
    “The important thing is the contribution you still can make to Bradley’s World,” his father’s voice said. “You’re still young. There’s time to rebuild what we used to have there.”
    “Yes. Certainly."
    “Instead of dying a futile but heroic death,” said Juan. “On the other hand,” Lynx said, “what did Eliot write? ‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason .’ ”
    Voigtland frowned. “Are you trying to say—”
    “And it is true,” Mark cut in, “that you were planning your escape far in advance. I mean, making the cubes and all, picking out the famous men you wanted to take—” “As though you had decided that at the first sign of trouble you were going to skip out,” said Lynx.
    “They’ve got a point,” his father said. “Rational selfprotection is one thing, but an excessive concern for your mode of safety in case of emergency is another.”
    “I don’t say you should have stayed and died,” Lydia said. “I never would say that. But all the same—”
    “Hold on!” Voigtland said. The cubes were turning against him, suddenly. “What kind of talk is this?”
    Juan said, “And strictly as a pragmatic point, if the people were to find out how far in advance you engineered your way out, and how comfortable you are as you head for exile—”
    “You’re supposed to help me!” Voigtland shouted. “Why are you